Rebound film review

certificate_PG

REBOUND

The already well-worn premise of taking a hapless bunch of kids and transforming them into sporting winners is getting thoroughly frayed this year. Recently Kicking And Screaming saw Will Ferrell coach a desultory soccer squad into a pubescent Juventus while Billy Bob Thornton does the equivalent for a wretched baseball team in the upcoming remake of The Bad News Bears. Rebound has Martin Lawrence playing Roy McCormick, a one-time top college basketball coach who is reduced to taking the reins of his perennially losing old junior high school basketball team, in this occasionally amusing all too predictable comedy.

There are parallels to be drawn between McCormick's declining fortunes and those of Lawrence, whose once stratospheric success has become more earthbound thanks to bouts of wayward behaviour and dubious films. Even the title could allude to Lawrence's career. The disdain shown by McCormick for his new job is echoed by the performance of Lawrence who barely gets out of first gear. It is left to others, most notably Megan Mullally's flippant turn as Principal Walsh and Breckin Meyer as Roy's smarmy agent, to get the most from the lackluster script.

Coach Roy's college career ends when one of his frequent violent outbursts results in the death of the team's feathered mascot. It was the final straw for authorities who condemn Roy's rampant ego, flagrant self-promotion and commercial endorsements as representing "everything that's wrong with college basketball." Banned from coaching at college level until he can prove he's overcome his anger management issues, he accepts the invitation from the members of his old junior high school basketball team. A more incompetent, raggle-taggle bunch of misshapen losers you'd be hard pressed to find, unless of course you looked at any of the other films dealing with the transformation of sporting delinquents.

Roy's first incisive observation, "they're really short", is swiftly followed by "I want my old life back", and "You may want to embarrass you, but you're not going to embarrass me" prompted by their first catastrophic defeat under his leadership. Faced with his very public humiliation, Roy decides to take on the challenge and impart some of his coaching genius on his young charges. Quite what that genius is is never exactly defined beyond a rudimentary pep talk.